Word: antitax
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Moscow is not the only cradle of revolution where people are having second thoughts these days. Now there's California too. The state that gave birth to the taxpayer revolt in the 1970s took a step back last week from the antitax orthodoxy that has kept American government in a fiscal straitjacket ever since. California voters, who have tended to feel about taxes the way Lenin felt about capital gains, agreed to ballot Proposition 111, which doubles the state gasoline levy to fund improvements for gridlocked highways. The outcome of that vote reverberated not just on the West Coast...
...through another ballot initiative, Proposition 13, that Californians slashed property taxes 57% in 1978; one year later, they approved a no less important cap on state spending. In the decade that followed, nearly 20 other states adopted similar measures, and Ronald Reagan and George Bush rode the antitax sentiment into the White House...
Like Ronald Reagan, who managed to preside in relative secrecy over $90 billion in "revenue enhancements" after the well-publicized (and disastrous) 1981 tax cuts, Bush has some bipartisan support for his antitax posture. Democrat James Sasser of Tennessee, chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, insisted last week, "What we've done here does not waddle enough to be called ducks." Perhaps. But since the nearly $6 billion in revenue enhancements enacted last week will rise to $30 billion over the next five years, taxpayers may be forgiven if they exercise their right to squawk...
...session in another week or so to decide how much more relief is needed and how to pay for it. It is hard to see how any significant amount could be made available without a hike in either sales or gasoline taxes. Deukmejian, who has taken a Bush-like antitax position, said last week that such a boost "would be a last resort...
...consequences of such government paralysis are most apparent in California, where the 1978 Proposition 13 ballot initiative sparked the antitax revolt that swept the country. Now, with the state government hobbled by tax restrictions and unable to respond to public pressure, citizen initiatives have mushroomed. California had 29 propositions on its ballot last year on matters ranging from limits on auto insurance to new tobacco taxes. William Zimmerman, who helps organize such voter initiatives, admits that they are not the best way to handle complex issues. But, he says, "if the alternative is no action, I'll take the flawed...